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Student EMTs work to save lives

ASU EMTs Trained to Help from The State Press on Vimeo.

Culture Undiscovered: Best in Show at the Tempe Festival of the Arts

What’s awesome about being an arts and culture blogger is that I get to talk about people and events that a lot of people don’t know about, but sometimes I get to talk about things that are really popular too! One of these things is the Tempe Festival of the Arts, which you may have missed but you’ve most likely heard of. Lucky for you, below are my top four finds from that weekend, so now you can pretend you were there too.

Culture Undiscovered: ASU’s Vagina Monologues: A Discourse

Feminism has been good to me. In high school, it gave me the guts to do simple things like question what I was hearing in my Catholic school’s marriage classes and shut down idiots who said women weren’t funny, and in college it’s inspired me to demand the best for myself and others, often by getting involved more seriously in efforts to end violence against women. The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking first play, is a combination of all of these things. Chances are you’ve heard of it, as it’s performed about 3500 times around the world every year and has given birth to V-Day, a movement to end violence against women and girls globally.

Culture Undiscovered: Cat Paintings (and more) in Downtown Phoenix

I love spring break just as much as the next stressed out college student, but too much sitting around drives me nuts. Three days of doing nothing is usually my threshold, and then I have to get out before I become a danger to myself and others. That’s why I headed out to Downtown Phoenix’s Art Detour 24 on March 17 to browse galleries for stuff to decorate my room with, and get out of my family’s hair for a while. Art Detour is a two-day, self-guided tour of downtown’s many and varied art venues organized by Artlink Phoenix, a volunteer-run arts organization dedicated to enhancing First Friday’s art walk and organizing events and fundraisers for the arts throughout the valley. Below are three galleries that I had to share.

Culture Undiscovered: In Defense of Burqas

On March 15, University of Chicago professor and public intellectual Martha Nussbaum came to ASU to talk about women's and human rights, a fitting topic given the current hysteria among the GOP’s presidential candidates surrounding women’s reproductive organs. Surprisingly, this was barely something that Nussbaum touched on. She instead focused specifically on the burqa bans that are currently sweeping Europe, and used them as a complex example of how religious discrimination and sexism can collide to oppress people in unexpected ways. Her deconstruction of the five major arguments that proponents of this type of legislation typically use has a lot to teach everyone:

Culture Undiscovered: Q&A with a Tattoo Artist

Sometimes, I’m selfishly finding out about things that I’m interested in when I realize that they’re too good not to write about. I’ve had tattoo artists on my brain lately, as I’ve been vaguely interested in getting my first tattoo (don’t freak out, mom). In the course of asking around I kept hearing the name Electric Haven, which turned out to be a classic tattoo parlor and barbershop just off campus run by two very talented tattoo artists. I decided to ask the shop’s K.C. Lange a few tattoo-related questions out of curiosity, and if his answers don’t make you want to go get tattooed right now, well, maybe you’re not as impulsive as I am.

Culture Undiscovered: Powered by Fiction: Bushpunk, Steampunk, and Time Traveling Robots

Being a creative writing major is mostly awesome, but sometimes I have to admit that it’s downright terrifying. When I get asked what my post-graduation plans are, part of me cringes. Poets without borders? Professional homeless person? My opportunities are slightly more limited than, say, an engineering major’s. But on the bright side, I get to spend every Tuesday night in class with the legendary Norman Dubie, and I really love what I do. That’s why it makes me happy to meet writers and other creative people who’ve managed to make a living doing what they’re passionate about; it gives me hope that I’m not destined to become a hobo.

Culture Undiscovered: “Playing Games” at the Phoenix Fringe Festival

Sometimes, it seems like I’m too critical for my own good. The world just presents me with so many problems to point out! I’ve come to accept that viewing the world through a critical lens will always be more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding as well -- calling people out on their problematic views and depictions of the world is the first step in changing the way we see it. So, when I talk about the Phoenix Fringe Festival play “Playing Games,” I can’t ignore its more cringe-worthy aspects. That’s not to say it was all bad -- there were a lot of real, hilarious moments in it that made it well worth seeing -- but like anything, it wasn’t perfect.

Culture Undiscovered: Heartbreak at Caramelpalooza

I realize that food is a big part of everyone’s lives (it kind of has to be), but it’s a bigger deal to me than most people. I’ve been obsessed with food for as long as I can remember, and not the healthy stuff either. This isn’t bragging -- my friends have bets going on when I’ll have my first heart attack -- it’s just a fact of life for me. I shudder at the thought of eating a salad, and the whole “broccoli as baby trees” thing never worked for me. It’s gotten to the point where I can bond with just about anyone over food: Adele didn’t have my heart until I heard her say, “I love food and hate exercise,” and “I don’t want a Caesar salad with no dressing. Why would I do that?” Preach, girl.

Culture Undiscovered: Local to Global Justice Story Time

A few weeks ago, I blogged about bell hooks and her inspiring keynote address on race, gender and why The Help shortchanges the very people it seems to be most concerned with. For me, this raised the question of how best to tell the stories of groups that have been (and still are) marginalized, in the United States and abroad. Now put that thought on hold while I bring you up to speed on what I did this week -- I promise, this will all come back around again.

Culture Undiscovered: A Swap Meet in Mesa Found the Fountain of Youth

People are weird. I’m not just saying this because I’m weird either; I’m saying this as an aficionado of weirdoes. I love the secret and specific weirdness that everyone has and conceals (and sometimes unwittingly displays), and that’s why swap meets are the best thing ever. Swap meets are where the “Real Americans” of Tea Party fame come together to make a quick buck, and sometimes accidentally let their freak flags fly. It’s hard to imagine anything more American than that.

Culture Undiscovered: Found Art at the Made in Arizona Art Festival

Because I’m from Scottsdale, I try to stay as far away from it as possible. Its unique combination of high-end plastic surgery and relentlessly entitled prep-school kids appeals to a very specific group of people -- one that I’m not a part of -- and usually offers little in the way of arts, culture or sanity. However, I was willing to venture back into the land of cougars and Porsche Cayennes for the Made in Arizona Art Festival from Feb. 10 to 12. Made in Arizona brings together more than 100 local artists and vendors annually, and it’s held in Old Town Scottsdale, which is almost not even in Scottsdale anyway (at least that’s what I told myself).

Video: Internship with a view

Culture Undiscovered: bell hooks on The Help, Banned Books, and Stories Worth Telling

How can I properly introduce bell hooks? I’ve found that it’s the people we most look up to that are the hardest to write about, so it makes sense that just the prospect of writing about her makes me want to run far away from my computer and draw more pictures of cats. If you know about bell hooks, then you’ll know what I mean, and if you don’t, then here’s the part where I try to condense her myriad accomplishments into a few sentences for you.

Culture Undiscovered: RISE and the Art of Living

On Sunday, I talked about ASU organization The Underground Foundation. One of the things that TUF does is help local charities and non-profits through fundraisers, the latest one being RISE (Revolution Inspired by Self Evolution). RISE is the name given to Zachary Chipps’ and Thomas Brown’s seven-month, cross-country bike ride dedicated to raising suicide awareness. Hopefully, Zachary says, they’ll be able to “bring the topic of suicide to the fore, ridding the topic of its cultural taboos.” Thomas and Zachary will be leading town hall meetings across the country with Survivors of Suicide groups, as well as meeting with “art and bicycle communities, LGBTQ support groups, Veterans’ Affairs organizations, and high school and college groups involved in community building.”

Culture Undiscovered: Get TUF About Music

Even though I do get genuinely excited about everything I write about here, there are some things that hit closer to home for me than others. The Underground Foundation (TUF) is one of those things for a lot of reasons. TUF is an ASU organization that brings together students “dedicated to solidifying and improving an independent music scene at Arizona State University and her surrounding cities.” Or at least that’s the official story on TUF’s facebook page. In reality, TUF is more than that. Because I can’t say it better than TUF president Khayree Billingslea, here’s our Q&A.

Urban Culture Vulture: Jazz and the Heart of the Matter: “The Divas Ride Again”

On Sunday, I wrote about ASU professor Andrew Barnes and his lecture on West Coast Jazz. As much as I enjoyed Professor Barnes’s lecture, something about it did strike me as off -- namely, its failure to mention any female jazz musicians or singers. Considering women’s undeniable impact on jazz as singers alone, I felt compelled to fill in this obvious gap in my newfound knowledge of jazz. I knew about Dizzy Gillespie, but what of Mary Lou Williams, the legendary female jazz pianist whose work is frequently cited as one of his major influences? Or Alice Coltrane, John Coltrane’s pianist/organist/harpist/composer/ wife? Even women’s most widely recognized contribution to jazz music, their work as vocalists, was something that I knew nothing about.

Archaeology students piece together past

The Archaeological Research Institute provides students with hands on opportunities to piece together past cultures through work with historic artifacts.

Urban Culture Vulture: Playboy, Charlie Brown, and West Coast Jazz

I’m always a sucker for someone who has a complete, encyclopedic knowledge of one specific topic. When I was 14, I met a girl who knew everything there is to know about whales -- she’s my best friend to this day. My little sister can tell you anything you’d ever need to know about vintage pin collections. ASU professor Andrew Barnes, it just so happens, has an exhaustive knowledge of jazz. So much so, in fact, that he gave the final lecture in ASU’s Jazz A to Z project lecture series.

Culture Undiscovered: Creating New Communities in Civic Space Park

Growing up in Phoenix can be strange. While it’s much too large a city to have that close-knit, small-town feeling, it’s also much more suburban and sprawling than big cities such as New York or Chicago. This combination doesn’t make for very exciting times as a kid, and years of living here left me wondering if being from Phoenix was something to be proud of. To me, Phoenix wasn’t exciting enough to be urban, or welcoming enough to be called my hometown. I’ve never fully gotten over this idea, even though I’ve found plenty of interesting things to do -- I still never felt a very strong sense of community here.